“The book is about writers, who thought they would have to take private satisfaction in shit work, suddenly being given this opportunity to work with unfettered ambition. And you see them fall upon this like starving men.”

“I seem to spend a lot of time being hectored by big ego’d men in my career. I anticipate a lot more of that.”

It’s an engaging conversation about the dominant narrative form of this century (at least in terms of ambition and scope), an exploration of the intersection of art and commerce, and a little bit of an inquiry into our age’s rush to consensus and its attendant need to declare something The Best Ever. Brett’s a terrific writer and has clearly thought long and hard about these topics.

Credits: This episode’s music is TV Age by Joe Jackson. The conversation was recorded at the home of a friend of Peter on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded at home on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Brett Martin by me.